Gone Fishin'

Cell biologist and former undergrad advisor Dave Gard now angling on the Green

As a graduate student during the 1980s,

Dave Gard recalls the first time he saw muscle cells he was growing in a petri dish begin to twitch. He was hooked. Cell Biology became his passion, whether in his lab investigating the assembly and organization of microtubules in frog eggs, or in the classroom teaching cell biology.

After completing his PhD at Caltech and post-doctoral fellowship at UC San Francisco, Gard joined the Department of Biology in the summer of 1987. For the next twenty-three years, he and his students studied microtubules, microscopic filaments required for a myriad of cellular functions in eukaryotic (nucleated) cells.

In 1989, Gard secured funding for the first laser-scanning confocal microscope in the Intermountain West. Using this technology, he and his students spent thousands of hours studying the organization and role of microtubules in frog oocytes, eggs, and embryos. When the confocal he had labored over for a decade became obsolete, it was replaced with a next generation scope. “We sold [the first confocal] for parts,” he opines, “but not before I entertained the thought of hiding away a note inside the machine’s scan head with ‘Dave Gard was here!,’” a nod to the ubiquitous “Kilroy was here!” seen in graffiti during WWII.

Around 2000, Gard’s research interests took another turn. Molecular studies by his lab and others around the world had revealed proteins related to XMAP215 in both evolution and function, known as “homologs.” They were to be found in many if not all eukaryotic cells–those distinguished by the presence of a nucleus and organelles enclosed by a plasma membrane.

“It was neat, and sort of mind-boggling,” he says “to realize that a protein you discovered might be a critical component required for the evolution and life of eukaryotic cells.”

Eventually, Gard found a new passion as the School’s Director of Undergraduate Advising. From 2010-2015 he helped shepherd thousands of undergraduate majors though the maze of classes required to earn their biology degrees. “It was crazy at times,” he recalls. “I averaged nearly two thousand, twenty-minute appointments a year.”

Well-known for his infectious enthusiasm, Gard received many awards, including the U’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2015. He taught several lecture and lab courses during his career but is perhaps best known for teaching BIOL 2020: Principles of Cell Biology and the honors section 2021: Principles of Cell Science. He estimates he taught these courses at least thirty times to nearly 6,000 students, many of whom

went on to medical or graduate school, or to other successful careers in the sciences.

Now emeritus, Gard hopes to spend much of his retirement with his wife Anne and her horse(s), his son Liam (a first year student at the U), and his daughter Tina who graduates from high school this spring. Gard also hopes to pursue some of his lifelong hobbies, including his passions for steam trains (full-sized and models), and collecting and playing Guild acoustic guitars.

These days, however, you’re most likely to find Gard roaming the banks of a local river, fly rod in hand. Or, look for him floating the Green with his fly fishing buddies from Biology, Darryl Kropf (also emeritus), and Gary Rose, in a drift boat they jointly purchased in 1995. Gard quips, “After thirty-one of these annual trips, we still ‘fish till it hurts,’ but it hurts a hell of a lot sooner than it used to!”